BAD – Gregor Schneider

Gregor Schneider's immersive installation of five interconnected identical bathrooms explores captivity within habits and compulsive cycles. About Gregor Schneider (b. 1969) is one of the most renowned contemporary German artists, recognized internationally, professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his revolutionary work Totes Haus u r, presented in the German Pavilion in 2001. Since then, his works, events, performances and installations, controversial, provocative, but always consistent and profoundly influential, address artistic, social, historical and political themes of great contemporary relevance on a global level. The BAD installation consists of five identical, interconnected bathrooms, located in the entrance hall of the Știrbei Wing, accompanied by a video projection that transmits in real time (livestream) the Haus u r installation, mounted at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Access to the exhibition will be through the Court of Honor of the museum, at Calea Victoriei no. 49-53. The dimensions, design, sanitary objects, lighting and every detail of the bathrooms are completely identical. They reflect contemporary conceptions about cleanliness, modern style, comfort, accessibility and seamless functionality. However, it is precisely this apparently natural functionality that hides the problem: it becomes a trap mechanism, like any comfortable and convenient solution to a need, which gradually transforms into a compulsive habit. Beyond the topographic placement of the bathrooms in the exhibition space and their sophisticated interconnection in a constraining labyrinth, the visitor's experience is one of becoming lost in the same bathroom repeated endlessly, without the possibility of advancing towards the "true" exhibition. Each door leads to the next bathroom, which leads to the next, and so on, endlessly. BAD speaks about the captivity of each of us in the echo chamber of our own habits, thoughts and environment. Living, wandering, consuming culture and eliminating, thinking, cleaning and experiencing alienation, making progress while remaining, in fact, in a circuit of prejudices with the same direction, as well as the loss of control in circumstances apparently among the most harmless and utilitarian: all these are brought to the foreground by Gregor Schneider's truly immersive installation, capable of questioning what he calls disappeared realities and cryptotopias. In partnership with Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Official partner: Banca Transilvania. Supported by: Goethe-Institut Bucharest, Dumagas Romania, Prietenii MNAR. Read more Toggle Installation